Only because we continue to give cheaters an "Uhm...I didn't see nothin' " pass as long they entertain us or enrich our bank accounts. I suppose it speaks to a wider issue with ethics and economics. If we hung cheaters by booting them out and eliminating them from future competition ala Armstrong.

Yes, lack of enforcement, either due to lack of willingness, or lack of technical ability, is central to this. When you don't enforce laws or rules, you punish the innocent and make some of them not-so-innocent.

Dmitriy, I really do think that the UCI and WADA hold a significant portion of the responsibility for all of the doping that went on in cycling until about 5 years ago. They are getting retroactive religion on the subject, for sure.

I'm conflicted about some of it. The doping was _so_ rampant, that to compete for a win (at times, even get in the race), you had to be a doper. The sanctioning body was not making any real motions to control it. As the man said, "Yes, I doped...We also put air in the tires and water in the bottles." For a while there, it was the price of admission and for that, I blame the sanctioning body every bit as much as the competitors themselves.

I've been there. It sucks. Do you cheat or do you compete? Especially when 'cheating' means you're doing the same crap as everyone else and 'competing' means paying your mortgage and taking care of your family.

At the end of the day, all racing is entertainment. Grown adults who hold athletes on some inspirational pedestal need to get a better grip on reality.

What is it within people, myself included, that leads to the willingness and / or desire to put people on pedestals? And why are we equally keen to knock them back down, oft for the weakest of reasons (Clinton / Lewinsky springs to mind).

If we hadn't let hero-worship blind us to the Cancer Jesus, he'd have been called out after his first TdF win. "Hey - how does a guy who's bailed out more times than he's finished, who's always been a mid-pack climber and marginal sprinter come back with one ball and perform like he's on PEDs all of the sudden...oh...wait...ne'er mind".

I don't have a dog in the Lance fight - I wasn't an avid cyclist until well after i parted company with motorcycles, and I "discovered" riding after being harangued by my then 6-year old son into going for a ride together. I knew of Lance of course - hard to be exposed to media without knowing. I think the first time I saw him on tv, Sheryl Crow was sorting a Chip Foose makeover for some old musclecar of his. I don't follow pro cycling, amateur cycling beyond my mental downhill friend, I haven't had a reason to be vested in his Livestrong foundation...nada. So at the end of the day, while I think he's a guilty cheat, that's not why he sucks donkey nuts. It's all of those things he did to hide and prop it up. Telling his young riders to dope or go home, purposefully running clean riders out of the sport, trashing the lives of his friends and former teammates. Nah - if he'd just stuck to cheating, we'd still find something like about him. Eff him. Eff him until he makes it right and there's just no way. How cycling careers did he ruin? What's that worth? How much have the Andreus lost directly attributable to him, just for being honest? No - LA isn't a cheater. He's a loser, a thug and a bully.

We want heroes because we, ourselves, are not great enough. But I think true heroes shun the limelight and have some true sense of fear. A hero is born in the moment from circumstances not of his or her design.

Lance became greedy and fearless...indestructible in his own mind...some of the the Wall Street crowd is the same. A hero is human.

The prevailing view amongst the cynical is that Indurain's 5 victories don't stack up to scrutiny. Because Indurain is a nice humble bloke though, no one's really interested in going after him.

That's a very good point. On the basis that EPO came in at the start of Indurain's series of TdF wins, you have to deal with a major bout of cognitive dissonance to believe he was clean. But you raise a very good point, LA's ego and arrogance got him caught. If he'd shown Indurain levels of humbleness and lived a quiet life no one would have cared.

We want heroes because we, ourselves, are not great enough. But I think true heroes shun the limelight and have some true sense of fear. A hero is born in the moment from circumstances not of his or her design.

"The prevailing view amongst the cynical is that Indurain's 5 victories don't stack up to scrutiny. Because Indurain is a nice humble bloke though, no one's really interested in going after him."

The prevailing view of Greg LeMond is that the peloton changed for him in 91 while wearing yellow as a collection of riders road away from his lead group on a climb. They rode away from the lead group climbing a couple MPH faster than he'd seen done on climbs in the 90 TDF. The message was that, at this level of the sport, there’s no way climbing could possibly improve that much in one year.

No cynicism here. The day the riders road away from LeMond he said was on a good day. Told me himself.